JorgeA

So, in your view, is Win98 actually more secure than current versions of Windows (XP/Vista/7/8)? Note: I'm not trying to start an argument, I'm sincerely interested. I've heard it argued before that Win98 is safer, but am not convinced strongly enough to do without malware protection. How do others feel about it? --JorgeA

It will be VERY interesting to see how the Neowinnies rationalize this one for Windows 8... --JorgeA

Thanks for the investigative work, you really punctured MSFT's balloon of hot air. Spread the news far and wide! --JorgeA

That's amazing, that so much traffic runs through one single outfit. --JorgeA

Nice find! Check out this crack in the comments section: --JorgeA

An update on Avast! 4.8 support for Windows 98 (SE). I just renewed the free one-year license for my 98SE laptop last night and there were zero problems. Then it downloaded the current virus definition files. Good to go for another year. --JorgeA

Leo Laporte goes off on Win8 in episode 403 of This Week in Tech. The guests meander around aimlessly for quite a while, but the fun begins around 1:21:30 with a discussion of the pseudo-Start Button, and goes on for about twelve minutes. The golden nugget in the conversation belongs to Leo (1:26): Dvorak intersperses some interesting tidbits about Tami Reller and Steven Sinofsky. A (possibly half-joking) morsel about a "Windows 97" that "was never released" led me to this old Thurrott article, which suggests that there's nothing new under the sun. Among the new OS's features would be: [emphasis added] Sound familiar? Oh, and apparently customers have defeated this feudal model once already. --JorgeA

That's quite a list, Charlotte. Thanks for putting it all together in one neat package. --JorgeA

That SIR made for fascinating reading -- thanks, jaclaz! It also helped that the actual report doesn't start until page 11 of the 22-page PDF. Still, a few things caught my eye. The first paragraph on page 11 suggests to the reader to... Note that we're being asked to consult page 78 of a 22-page report. There seems to be a longer report available, but there's nothing on this PDF to indicate its existence; you have to click on a link in the "About this report" page which offers "past reports and related resources." If we check Figure 6, we can see that the security of protected XP SP3 was virtually the same as (or even lower than) that of protected Vista SP2 until October 2012, and if we look at Fig. 7 we see that the same applies to protected Windows 7 (i.e., it too was infected more often than XP). As for the October 2012 spike, Figure 8 on page 19 shows that this is almost entirely due to a sudden upsurge in two types of malware infections in Korea (discussed on page 20). So I would say, unless you live in Korea or are in the habit of visiting Korean websites, just keep your malware security suite and all your applications up to date. Even in Korea, by December you had a 99.6% chance of being OK even by Microsoft's reckoning. IMHO, the talk about XP being sooooo insecure is much ado about little. And let's no forget that, today, the bulk of security threats consist of Flash and Java exploits, such that vulnerabilities specific to Windows (any flavor) account for that much smaller a proportion of all PC infections. Whatever version of Windows one uses, the key here is to either keep Flash and Java up to date, or to disable them. Comparisons to Windows 8 are of limited value at this point because all Win8 computers are new -- that is, they come with the most recent versions of Flash and (maybe) Java and other software, and (crucially) they have not had a chance to go out of date yet as users neglect to update them. That said, if Win8 ever took off among the "3-year-old-mindset" crowd, as they appear intent on doing with their Metro Playskool interface, then -- despite all its vaunted security advantages -- over time I would predict a longterm increase in Win8 infections to levels well above those of any prior Windows OS, thanks to the susceptibility of Win8-mentality users to use simplistic passwords and to fall for bu11$h!t e-mail from pretty e-cards and Nigerian princes. --JorgeA

The Future of Advertising: 'Pay-Per-Gaze' Is Just the Beginning A machine that can read your thoughts? Gosh, I wonder if the NSA and assorted tyrants might have any interest in developing and deploying this technology... --JorgeA

It IS a pain now, if you want to highlight a block of quoted post text for deletion, you have to be careful that the selection doesn't bleed over into the quote header. Doing this was much easier (and safer) on the old forum software. Also, if you want to reply individually to several things from the same post, you can't do that anymore with a proper header. There doesn't seem to be a way to copy-and-paste the header to a new block of quoted text. (At least, I haven't yet discovered the way to do it.) I've taken to either (1) inserting ellipses, but this is clunky and prone to misreading; or (2) giving up and creating my own ersatz quote headers. But hey, unlike the previous forum software at least this version is working (most of the time, ahem). --JorgeA

Another VERY GOOD one! : jaclaz Agreed! TELVM is the thread winner! +10 --JorgeA

One more trip down memory lane, based on Thurrott's forays into his archives. Discussing the history leading up to the launch of Windows XP, he wrote the following: [emphasis added!] Well, well... --JorgeA

Never mind our published privacy policy, here's what we really mean when the legal chips are down: GOOGLE: If You Send To Gmail, You Have 'No Legitimate Expectation Of Privacy' Caveat utilitator. --JorgeA

Another reason to keep your smartphone off unless you need to make a call or expect one! Slowly, the conditions for 1984 are being fulfilled: (Sorry about the size.) Here's another report on the topic. --JorgeA

From the "water is wet" news department: High PC prices hindering industry recovery, analysts say You don't say! More seriously, here's what they mean: [emphasis added] Of course, PC vendors aren't stupid. No doubt they would prefer to sell what people actually want to buy, whereas Microsoft in its attempt to leverage its near-monopoly status has been pushing them to put Windows 8 on their systems. The brilliant engineering minds at MSFT would do well to study some economics. They're not like the government schools which can rip people off with impunity (and well-honed agitprop) for decade after decade. There ARE live alternatives out there, and it doesn't require a "majority" voting with their dollars to sink Ballmer & Co. --JorgeA

How about these folks? (Either or both.) How do they fit into the scheme? --JorgeA

A very cool trick! How did you do that? --JorgeA

Well done analysts. Well we can't just blame them since they are working from a statistical disadvantage. Just imagine if Microsoft would release the truthful numbers for Surface and Windows 8. Then you might be able to get a really accurate analysis. I suspect this is another case (like 3D televisions) where the manufacturers have gotten ahead of what the market wants. There's simply no compelling need for touch capability on a larger machine intended for serious use (in fact, the ergonomics make touch worse than the keyboard+mouse model). Add in the price premium for touch screens, and you've got a loser in your hands. Yeah, this is a completely made-up memory. I was around back then, very active on CompuServe, and nobody was complaining about Windows 95 or the new Start Button/Menu. In fact, it was about as close to a consensus on the worth of a new Microsoft OS as I've ever seen. --JorgeA

<raising hand> Although I'm not sure that I'd want to go surfing the Web on a browser that identified itself as "Pirate Browser." Couldn't that start setting off all sorts of alarm bells on every site I visited? Unless the idea were to use it only for "sensitive" surfing. [emphasis added] BTW, wasn't there a way, in the old forum software, to give several quotes separately from the same post and have them all properly atttributed and formatted? (Not happening in the second quote above.) --JorgeA

Did anybody else have trouble getting on MSFN over the weekend? Every time I tried to visit on Saturday afternoon and Sunday, I got a DNS error. I ended up going to one of those "is my website down?" sites, and it said that MSFN was offline. Might that have had something to do with the SQL server issue discussed in the previous couple of posts? At least we don't seem to have lost any posts this time. --JorgeA

The latest figures seem to suggest a spike in sales following the recent price reduction, but generally speaking... Surface sales are pathetic --JorgeA

Interesting discussion regarding the effect of NSA spying on the growth of U.S.-based cloud services. Thr following exchange between host Robert Ballecer, S.J., and guest Oliver Rist of InfoWorld begins at 47:29: So, ironically, government spying might just help to save personal computing, in the sense that it could slow down the rush to the cloud -- and therefore to tablets and other mobile devices, thereby undermining both the rationale for Microsoft's Windows 8 push and the viability of the "software as a service," perpetual-rent feudal model. --JorgeA

Yeah, defenders of this notion will say that, "Well, your PC could crash at any time, so how's that any better than working in the cloud?" The answer, of course, is that working on your PC requires only one system (your PC) to be up and running at a given moment, whereas working in the cloud requires your PC and the cloud server to be both functional at the same time. Oh, and your Internet service -- so, make that three machines that all need to be operational at the same time in order to work in the cloud. --JorgeA

And while we're on Internet privacy + surveillance issues -- can anybody comment on the following: Note that this goes well before Vista or XP, and if true, would cover versions of Windows all the way back to 98FE. (I read somewhere, but now can't find it, that this key was introduced in 95 OSR2.) We'd have to start using Windows 3.x... or Linux. Comments? Insights? --JorgeA